Romance Restrictions
Heindrich
Member, Moderator Posts: 2,959
This discussion was created from comments split from: Romance with Viconia De Vir in BG2 EE..
I split this off from the original thread because OP asked a specific question about Viconia in BG2:EE, and I didn't want to flood him/her with notifications of a more generalised discussion.
I split this off from the original thread because OP asked a specific question about Viconia in BG2:EE, and I didn't want to flood him/her with notifications of a more generalised discussion.
4
Comments
I personally find it odd that Viconia would even give Half-Orcs a chance, but I suppose she likes the strength...
Rather than making all characters bisexual and available for all races, they ought to have restrictions that makes sense for their race and personality. Player choice should come from more NPC options (perhaps from DLCs if necessary) rather than making romance an "everything goes free for all".
[This image is clean, by the way]
I'm not sure how reliable of a source this is, especially since I found a D&D cross-species that was incorrect according to this chart, but it's a nice general idea I suppose! I believe both of you are correct! That's how things like Half-Dragons and Dracolisks come to be...
... sorry if this is going a bit off topic, but just clearing things up a bit!
Which, of course, is an incredibly obvious observation to make.
Hey, not every post can be a gem, people.
MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Lawful Good Gnomeo hates it when Chaotic Good Dwarffette scatters her axes across the bedroom... But Gnomeo loves her good and gentle heart and forgives her foibles...
As for race restrictions. Disgusting really. Love should have no boundaries. Especially between the player races. What is a Dwarf, On the outside, but a short fat version of a human. And if a human thinks this (Although I'm not selling the love here) what does a Dwarf look to a Gnome then...
Preference should be considered. If you like men. Your not going to suddenly like women even with that 25 in charisma.
I feel the romance options should be tweaked in game but the only thing I can think of is something like Charisma having an effect (Viconia will only romance you with a charisma of 19 as you are a dwarf and Chaotic evil aligned)
So hard to solve...
However, In some of the game romances that I have played, I have found myself feeling that by trying to make a character potentially “love anyone", the character was weakened. To me, a good example of a strong character is Dorian from Dragon Age: Inquisition. As much as I would have liked for that character to have been romanceable by my female protagonist, I respect and applaud the decision to keep him available to only love interests that made sense for him.
A story could have been contrived to make him available to all. Anything is possible when it comes to love. But I feel the characters story, the emotional impact it had for me as a player would not have been as strong. I like strong characters.
The one thing I don’t personally like, is being limited by alignment as to whom you can have in your party. I would love for my protagonist to have more of an opportunity to bounce off the likes of Edwin or Viconia, but that never ends well unless I’m willing to go out of character and begin lopping off the heads of innocents for a time. This never made sense to me as I always thought, who would like being popular more than someone with selfish or evil inclinations. Not to mention the power that comes with that.
Of course if you create a character he or she can be attracted to whomever you chose and the people who designed the NPCs didn't envision them falling for a Dwarf.
Considering how haughty and conceited dragons are supposed to be, why in the 9 hells would one stoop to breeding with a human? Barring some really twisted bestiality fetish...
Whatever guys... I get that it makes sense from a realistic standpoint that the NPCs be picky about who they romance... I am just saying that if I were a dev I would follow the path that the EE devs obviously have and make romances not depend on race. If you are going to put content in a game you should make it available to all players. I am not saying make everyone romancable by everyone. That would be stupid. What I am saying is that if you are going to include a specific facet in your content (romances or strongholds, for example) then you should make at least a portion of that facet available to all players. Everyone can get a stronghold. Not everyone can get a romance. @Ravenslight gets where I am coming from at least.
I mean, from a roleplaying point of view, it is perfectly understandable why Aerie , Anomen or Viconia won't date all races.
Developers don't merely want customers to play their game, they want customers to re-play it. All of the romances (like all of the strongholds) are available to all players ... but not all in one run. You've got to play through numerous times to sample all the possibilities, and multiple re-plays is what an RPG-dev wants to encourage.
I am in favour of restrictions. The more restrictions the better! However, if a player can RP their way to break those restrictions, such as acting certain ways, treating the love interest's race with respect, then yes, love can blossom out of those actions or indirect words.
It would be easier if the player played a certain race/gender/alignment/class/whatever but being able to break through to that person would be a more powerful, and fulfilling situation.
I am also in favour of, the more restrictions, the more love interests the game should have.
So basically echoing everything the taco said....
Edit : AND ELVES AND GNOMES ARE A NO!?
NOOOOOO
My Drow guy and Gnome girl will never have a kid now
QQ
So sad.
Also, on topic. I could see Viconia's hate of Elves but I think Jaheira and Aerie don't seem to have problems with the other races.